A Facebook correspondent responds to business and the ACA:
The initial concept of ACA was a good one, but of course, many wealthy interests lobbied (successfully) to make a mess of it. Still, it’s better than nothing by a small but significant amount. Right-wing myopia knows no bounds, however. I know of right-wing employers complaining about ACA at the same time it was actually saving them expenses and increasing their profits. Universal coverage would be good. Take my word for it.
Indeed, I’d love to be able to trust assurances like that, but I am all too well aware of the narrow interests with which we all tend to operate. Naturally, some folks can throw out the blinders and ask what is better for society at large, and so I always have to wonder if a businessman who disregards his immediate cash savings is motivated by mere ideological kant – or a sincere concern that the issue at hand, while beneficlal to themselves, is harmful to society. Think of the polluter who is not required to clean up after themselves, and yet does so anyways. Do the employers fit the first category, or the second?
And, of course, businessmen are not the only folks faced with this conundrum. Any citizen can be faced with a situation in which their reaction may be beneficial to themselves, but not for society. Indeed, most of us fail that test rather horribly – everyone here owning a car who could make do with a bike, hands up!
Yep, that’s just about all of us. Including me.
And while the pollution one is easy, the medical one is more difficult. My exposure to the theoretical arguments over motivations for medical research in a one-payer system was greatly lessened when I gave up on REASON Magzine, so I don’t know if any kind of consensus was ever reached; I doubt it, since neither side had a motivation to end the fight. My hope is that, soon enough, we’ll understand how to develop meds far more cheaply than we do now, greatly reducing costs and making the question of whether we should jump to a one payer system more easily answered, and executed if necessary.
